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Murderbot 1x08
I'm still absorbing this one!
(Also, I lasted this long without blocking people on Tumblr just so I don't have to see their hot takes in the tags, but this finally broke me. Some people have no comprehension of nuance whatsoever.)
The mirroring with Gurathin and Murderbot is still just fascinating - I cannot get over that everything Gurathin does (in this case, invading MB's privacy and blurting out its biggest secret) is something that MB does first (ditto, in both cases). I also hadn't really absorbed, until
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sovay pointed it out, but now I can't unsee it, how blatantly Gurathin is talking about himself with the "defective construct who kills everyone around you" line. That venom is not directed at you, Murderbot! I mean, it is, but the intensity of it isn't. And they're both acting from a very legitimate place of fear - MB glosses its invasion of Gurathin's mind as regular curiosity, and his as being a "sneaky bastard", but in both cases, they're scared (and validly!) and need to know what the other has planned for them. And neither of them like the answer they came up with ...(Also, MB about why it acted to help Gurathin - I can't remember the exact words, but something like "I'm not being nice, I just don't want to listen to you screaming." That's exactly the sort of thing that a lying liar who lies would say, MB! It's not that it likes him, even before their shared mental invasion, but if it wanted him to hurt, or just didn't care if he suffers and didn't want to listen to it, all it has to do is ... nothing. It can simply go outside for ten or fifteen minutes.)
And I really like the way that the show has taken the tack of having MB come back to defend them when its relationship with them is at its lowest. (I mean, *it* may not even have realized that's what it's doing, but that's clearly what it's going to do.) Because that means it has to make the right choice, the moral choice, when it believes that all it's going to get for it is to be reviled and hated and possibly melted down for defective scrap. Clearly none of that is the case either, but it means the decision becomes, not saving these people because they're uniquely special to it, but saving these people because it is right - because MB has to decide what kind of person it's going to be.
And all of this taking place against a media landscape that portrays people like MB as inhuman monsters! That's also a really great move on the show's part, I think - MB has been taking its cues from media in how to behave as a free person, but it's dealing with a sanitized media landscape in which people like it are portrayed as stereotypes and villains. What is it supposed to think about that, how is it supposed to deal? It not only doesn't know who it is, but it has to actively work against a set of media models that basically only gives it "slave" or "villain" to draw upon.
And the humans also have to deal with this! Especially Gurathin, whose experience with real-life SecUnits has probably been entirely in their corporate enforcer role. The rest of them likely have little to no real-life experience to draw on, and they mean well, but they also have those media portrayals of servile or evil bots floating around in the backs of their heads. It's really a good move.
Gotta say I appreciated Mensah's smackdown of Ratthi. "It's not your pet!" Like ... does MB deserve people who accept it no matter what? Yes! Did he deserve that? Also yes! But at the same time, Mensah's snapping because she's on the edge here, too! The feral strays are fighting! There's legitimate reason to believe that MB might pose an actual danger to the people she's responsible for. If she chooses wrong, they'll all die. And she's also seen a more human side of MB than any of them have; she has more evidence that it's a person than any of them do.
(Except for Gurathin, ironically. While both of them react to their look inside the other's head in ways that are perfectly in character, I am actually curious if both of them are going to end up parsing those glimpses with a lot more nuance and awareness later on.)
Cannot wait for the last two episodes!
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Also, canon psychic links AND 'we have to go into danger to get medical care for our feverish delirious woobie whose brow we are taking turns to mop' AND all the wonderful 'I must save you even though you hate me' dynamics you've pulled out here - please can this show continue to play all my favourite tropes :-D
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(Also, I lasted this long without blocking people on Tumblr just so I don't have to see their hot takes in the tags, but this finally broke me. Some people have no comprehension of nuance whatsoever.)
I am so sorry the discourse finally evolved to the blockable stage.
And they're both acting from a very legitimate place of fear - MB glosses its invasion of Gurathin's mind as regular curiosity, and his as being a "sneaky bastard", but in both cases, they're scared (and validly!) and need to know what the other has planned for them. And neither of them like the answer they came up with ...
How very dare my enemy have a mirror inside their head.
And all of this taking place against a media landscape that portrays people like MB as inhuman monsters! That's also a really great move on the show's part, I think - MB has been taking its cues from media in how to behave as a free person, but it's dealing with a sanitized media landscape in which people like it are portrayed as stereotypes and villains.
And we have previously seen Sanctuary Moon presented as high-glam, low-stakes space soap, the comfort watch which provided Murderbot with the words to reassure Arada and the breathing exercise to share with Mensah, so the abrupt shift into horror is jarring both its own right (and not just the cosmic horror of an eternity of mass murder in the event horizon, but further adventures in graphic decapitation, echoing the deaths of Leebeebee and the nameless GrayCris SecUnit) and because it drives home the exclusion you point out, how there's no way for Murderbot actually to exist as itself within the show's construction of the world. Which Murderbot actually kind of played with comedically during the glorious hallucination sequence when its self-insert was suddenly human with the same ludicrously sculpted hair and wild facial takes as any other actor on the bridge of Sanctuary Moon, but in addition to its consistent assertions of its non-humanity, Murderbot has clearly explained that it's not a bot, either, which means it's not just that the closest thing to it on the show becomes a danger to humans the second it develops free will and memory: in terms of representation, its favorite show literally doesn't have a role for it. Neither does its life. It will have to make one up.
There's legitimate reason to believe that MB might pose an actual danger to the people she's responsible for. If she chooses wrong, they'll all die. And she's also seen a more human side of MB than any of them have; she has more evidence that it's a person than any of them do.
Which seemed to be underlying that line to me as well: if Murderbot wants to walk out on them, it has the right. It's not bound to them, either artificially or organically. It has autonomy. People do. And sometimes they can't cope and they just clear out.
(Except for Gurathin, ironically. While both of them react to their look inside the other's head in ways that are perfectly in character, I am actually curious if both of them are going to end up parsing those glimpses with a lot more nuance and awareness later on.)
(I sure hope so.)
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It's sad that Sanctuary Moon is MB's favourite show, now we've seen the evil-murdering-bot part of the show. It speaks volumes about MB's self-hatred, from its confused memories of killing those 57 people, that it resonates so strongly with Sanctuary Moon. Another area where the show is darker than the book.
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(I also approve of the show's choice to spend two episodes and several narratively important scenes with Gurathin wobbly, about to fall down, and looking like he's been beaten in the face with a cement block.)
But there's also really a lot to unpack with everything that's going on with agency and trauma and characters navigating their differences (or failing to do so), and the way the show's in-universe media landscape reflects all of this too! Just really well done. I was not expecting this show to give me so many interesting thoughts to chew over!
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I'm sure you will be shocked, SHOCKED to hear that this episode reminded me intensely of "Dust to Dust" in some ways.
[Inevitable Babylon 5 spoiler digression follows]
Aside from the obvious parallel of the enemy mind meld, it actually does relate to something I was thinking about with Londo and G'Kar recently, actually before this episode aired - which is that G'Kar initially sees and reacts to only the worst things from his involuntary data dump from Londo (that Londo is the one who set into motion the chain of events that resulted in the wholesale destruction of his world). But it is interesting that the scenes we saw flashed back to in the show from G'Kar's POV are ones that also show Londo's shock and reluctance. The show itself could easily have cherry-picked only the worst of him, but it doesn't. G'Kar doesn't just gets the worst, he gets it all. And he's initially only parsing Londo's memories through the filter of his own shock, anger, and hate - very justifiably! But he's also in a very unique position to be the only person who actually gets to see the regret and remorse that Londo is too proud to reveal or talk about. And I feel that there's every reason to think that he later reflected on it enough to pick up on those aspects of the memories, too, once he was no longer too buried in his own emotions to recognize the entirety of what he was seeing.
Gurathin and Murderbot have an even greater opportunity to do this because they both presumably have a limited form of total recall, as well as being the kind of obsessive-compulsive dumbasses who probably would play back their saved recollections. I don't know how the show is going to play out, for all I know this will be addressed to a degree, but I think Gurathin in particular has a unique opportunity to recognize some of the context that Murderbot either won't talk about, or genuinely doesn't understand about itself, regarding its own guilt, remorse, and desire to avoid being the killing machine it believes it is.
In both cases it's an absolutely delicious narrative means of getting the private thoughts of a character who absolutely will not talk about their most deeply held feelings into the head of another character who they would never, ever actually tell, but who can process it later and understand them a little better.
(Non-Babylon-5 thoughts coming in a new comment.)
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NOOOOO. If it helps any, though obviously much too late for this one, I've found that sometimes when DW glitches on a comment post, backbuttoning can restore the previous instance of the browser with the intact comment. (You'll usually have to click on the "reply" button to get it to show up, but it's there. It's saved me on Ao3 comments a few times! And if it is no help, apologies for the unwanted advice.)
I am so sorry the discourse finally evolved to the blockable stage.
It's probably good for me to remove a few people who likely didn't want to be in my general circles either!
How very dare my enemy have a mirror inside their head.
THAT. THAT EXACTLY.
And we have previously seen Sanctuary Moon presented as high-glam, low-stakes space soap, the comfort watch which provided Murderbot with the words to reassure Arada and the breathing exercise to share with Mensah, so the abrupt shift into horror is jarring both its own right (and not just the cosmic horror of an eternity of mass murder in the event horizon, but further adventures in graphic decapitation, echoing the deaths of Leebeebee and the nameless GrayCris SecUnit) and because it drives home the exclusion you point out, how there's no way for Murderbot actually to exist as itself within the show's construction of the world.
Yes! There's another post bouncing around in my head, about how Sanctuary Moon in this episode is actually a spot-on depiction of the kind of narratively betraying, out-of-left-field plot twist that is always a risk in TV shows like the kind of show that it's been shown to be (corporate for-profit media that is emotional catnip to the people who watch it - rather like a lot of beloved shows IRL). This is absolutely the kind of dumbass, unsupported plot twist that have sent fandoms up in mushroom clouds before - you can practically sense the wank on the future equivalent of Sanctuary Moon message boards, the factions, the apologists, the fixit virtual seasons, etc. This is a dead on, sympathetic-to-the-viewer depiction of the way that shows like Sanctuary Moon fuck over their most loyal fans. Murderbot doesn't seem too upset by it - though it's also a completely unreliable narrator of its emotions - and also, as you say, it's very clear that it's not a bot; the closest that it has to an entry point into this world is not the one it chooses (in its Sanctuary Moon self-inserts, it sees itself as one of the humans, the more fleshed-out and emotionally rounded characters, which is also an extraordinarily meta thing to unpack). But it very clearly does think about the murderous navbot in the show as a model for itself when it's flailing around, trying to settle on a future course of action.
I did not expect this ridiculous action-serial sci-fi show to give me so many crunchy things to think about!
(/also Murderbot, probably)
Along those lines: why does it call itself Murderbot? Because of shows like this! It's the only way that it's ever seen anything like itself on TV.
Which seemed to be underlying that line to me as well: if Murderbot wants to walk out on them, it has the right. It's not bound to them, either artificially or organically. It has autonomy. People do. And sometimes they can't cope and they just clear out.
Yes! That too. Being an independent, autonomous person means having the right to walk out. It means having the right not to feel the same way about another person that they want from you. (See also: Mensah and Gurathin.) It means having the right to be a complete jerk, even. (Another thoughtful meta on that from CentauriAnthropology.)
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Yes, I agree! It's a nicely done case of MB expressing something it would never express, that it probably doesn't even realize it feels, through a plausibly deniable means. I think you're right that at least some of the other characters probably think it's talking about itself. (To be fair, some of them might think it's watching TV again ...) But yeah, I love how the show reveals the characters' innermost truths in ways even they don't realize/don't want, but it comes out anyway.
It's sad that Sanctuary Moon is MB's favourite show, now we've seen the evil-murdering-bot part of the show. It speaks volumes about MB's self-hatred, from its confused memories of killing those 57 people, that it resonates so strongly with Sanctuary Moon.
Yeah. Like I was saying above, I feel like what we saw of Sanctuary Moon in this episode is a dead-on depiction of the kind of narratively betraying "twists" that are always a risk of that sort of media (the MCU/Star Wars/etc corporate franchises that inevitably pull the rug out from under their most loyal fans). When Murderbot self-inserts, it does it as the human characters, who are the most fleshed out and the ones with all the narrative sympathy in the Sanctuary Moon universe. But when it names itself, and when it plans its future course of action, it looks to the Navbot (and probably similar stereotypes) for guidance, because that is all it has in terms of media portrayals that are as close as it can get to itself. There is a LOT to unpack there.
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I fainted.
But he's also in a very unique position to be the only person who actually gets to see the regret and remorse that Londo is too proud to reveal or talk about. And I feel that there's every reason to think that he later reflected on it enough to pick up on those aspects of the memories, too, once he was no longer too buried in his own emotions to recognize the entirety of what he was seeing.
Agreed! I always took it to account for some of the shift in their relationship which seems to occur without the kinds of deepening interaction such would have been normal for the show even during the pants-on-head lunacy of the production of Seasons 4 and 5 (which we now know to have been pants-on-head-on-fire). But it clearly needed some time to settle and for G'Kar to accept that his other impressions of Londo were just as real as the ones that confirmed the worst suspicions he had always held about the man. Gurathin right now is just seeing fifty-seven dead civilians and a chosen name with murder in it. He didn't hear that it said his words as if it meant them, that fragile, that vulnerable. He still thought it was him. ("Did I just say something?")
Gurathin and Murderbot have an even greater opportunity to do this because they both presumably have a limited form of total recall, as well as being the kind of obsessive-compulsive dumbasses who probably would play back their saved recollections.
(a) Gurathin having anything resembling a data-eidetic memory combined with a life full of actions he would love to forget is not to be envied from a person-to-person perspective, but should totally be exploited in fic.
(b) Not remembering enough of the novella to compare, I was fascinated that show!Murderbot sincerely seems to be unable to recollect anything about the masscre except that it has a memory of it, which is a much more squishily human state for its head to be in than we have previously had indications of.
(c) Crud, there's another parallel. If the Hugos do not implode in a puff of wank this year, this show should definitely pick up a nomination in 2026.
I don't know how the show is going to play out, for all I know this will be addressed to a degree, but I think Gurathin in particular has a unique opportunity to recognize some of the context that Murderbot either won't talk about, or genuinely doesn't understand about itself, regarding its own guilt, remorse, and desire to avoid being the killing machine it believes it is.
Yes. Even Mensah doesn't have that bone-recognition of that part of its nature. It would require him to get, ironically, out of his own head to a degree we haven't seen him capable of so far, but it has also become incredibly clear that reentering even the fringes of the Corporation Rim has decompensated him like whoa. It is legitimately heroic of him not to have relapsed into addiction, since while I am confident that he was weird on Preservation, on this mission he seems to have gone right back into cagey, paranoid, industrial espionage mode and honestly on some level why shouldn't he? He's in enemy territory.
(I am still sorting how I feel about him being any orientation of romantic, but am settling toward accepting that it makes sense for him to have imprinted body and soul on Mensah, whether it's actually romance or just the closest available language. Gurathin is better at reading his own emotions than Murderbot, but I wouldn't say that makes him actually good at it.)
In both cases it's an absolutely delicious narrative means of getting the private thoughts of a character who absolutely will not talk about their most deeply held feelings into the head of another character who they would never, ever actually tell, but who can process it later and understand them a little better.
Especially if they one hundred percent never wanted to!
(The fact that Gurathin and Murderbot literally speak for one another after it has been a metaphor for more than three-quarters of the season is just something I am going to be impressed by for a little while.)
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This is a vague book recollection filtered by way of fanfic, but in the bookverse I'm pretty sure Murderbot has two different kinds of memory - computer memory (eidetic, but subject to editing/erase), and organic memory in the biological parts of its brain, which it tends to discount but gives it the same kind of imperfect recall that humans have. I don't know how this relates to the massacre because I don't remember anything specific about that from the books, but my guess just based on that recollection is that it's had its memories wiped of the massacre, but the organic parts of its brain have retained it, possibly with an extra layer of PTSD/memory repression in the same sense as a human that's been through something deeply traumatic.
(I'm pretty sure Gurathin also has something similar to this, but in his case the computer part is a synthetic augment for his organic brain which is his primary source of memories and thinking in general, whereas Murderbot has this reversed, with its computer brain as its primary brain and the organic memory as a sort of fragmentary, very unreliable backup, from its point of view.)
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Oh, well, silver lining!
THAT. THAT EXACTLY.
I am really enjoying this show!
There's another post bouncing around in my head, about how Sanctuary Moon in this episode is actually a spot-on depiction of the kind of narratively betraying, out-of-left-field plot twist that is always a risk in TV shows like the kind of show that it's been shown to be (corporate for-profit media that is emotional catnip to the people who watch it - rather like a lot of beloved shows IRL). This is absolutely the kind of dumbass, unsupported plot twist that have sent fandoms up in mushroom clouds before - you can practically sense the wank on the future equivalent of Sanctuary Moon message boards, the factions, the apologists, the fixit virtual seasons, etc.
Yes! You should write that post. All the Lieutenant/Captain/NavBot OT3s that were just brutally jossed.
Murderbot doesn't seem too upset by it - though it's also a completely unreliable narrator of its emotions -
The twist seems to stick with it a lot more than suggested by the initial reaction in its normal disaffected tone that it just wants to find out if Flight Officer Hordööp-Sklanch gets it next.
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(in its Sanctuary Moon self-inserts, it sees itself as one of the humans, the more fleshed-out and emotionally rounded characters, which is also an extraordinarily meta thing to unpack). But it very clearly does think about the murderous navbot in the show as a model for itself when it's flailing around, trying to settle on a future course of action.
There are no construct characters, so it has to choose from human or bot as the circumstances seem to apply. It has not yet realized it has the fan option of really transforming the canon.
Along those lines: why does it call itself Murderbot? Because of shows like this! It's the only way that it's ever seen anything like itself on TV.
That makes sense to me.
It means having the right not to feel the same way about another person that they want from you. (See also: Mensah and Gurathin.)
Plus the shitshow currently going down with Ratthi/Arada/Pin-Lee. So much of this show is about how you cannot control other people. Or you can, but then you're a corporate dystopia and it just seems unfair that the mind-enslaved cannon fodder keep dying instead of the suits.
(Another thoughtful meta on that from CentauriAnthropology.)
I like that a lot. Thank you for sharing it. This episode was indeed entirely about the mortifying ordeal of being known.
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I like that, too; it rings true. Gurathin can't be the only Corporate refugee in Preservation, but he could have been the first that Bharadwaj knew well and no matter what the one who became her friend.
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Every episode I have the urge to reread All Systems Red because I remember liking Gurathin but now I have such feral feelings about him... it might add something to the reread of a book I already love. He was so sad and sweaty this episode I felt a huge urge to wrap him in a blanket, no matter how much he would probably complain.
This ep had a lot of excellent chewy stuff going on and the one that struck me most is what you pointed out about the Sanctuary Moon ep - MB's attempts to construct a personality post-governor module hack, when we know it must've had something beforehand to even want to hack it in the first place, and trying to draw all those details from the absolute insanity that is a proper balls-to-the-wall soap opera. It's like if I got retrograde amnesia and decided Emmerdale was the right pattern for human behaviour. I'll be interested to see whether the show has MB start copying cues from the survey crew as well, which I think comes up in the books but again I'm definitely due a reread.
Thank you for posting about the show anyway, it's what got me excited to binge it and I am loving the ride.
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Yeah, I think it's also adding a certain .... definite something to all of this that he's not fully compos mentis at the moment either - he's feverish, in pain, not fully tracking.
(a) Gurathin having anything resembling a data-eidetic memory combined with a life full of actions he would love to forget is not to be envied from a person-to-person perspective, but should totally be exploited in fic.
OH NO. (Oh yes.)
This also makes me wonder exactly how closely his past does track to Murderbot's. We know he was a corporate spy and they had a lot of control over him. Did he kill people too? Get people killed? He must have.
If the Hugos do not implode in a puff of wank this year, this show should definitely pick up a nomination in 2026.
Cosigned! Which honestly was not at all what I expected going into this. I thought it was going to be ... well, Sanctuary Moon, basically - a fun, rompy, lightweight space opera show. Which it is to a degree, but there's also so much thought and care that went into making it! I was not expecting to have this much to chew over.
(The fact that Gurathin and Murderbot literally speak for one another after it has been a metaphor for more than three-quarters of the season is just something I am going to be impressed by for a little while.)
*muffled screaming*
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I can't wait until Murderbot discovers that online fandom is a thing.
Normally I'm violently allergic to fic about fictional characters in fandom (usually it comes across about like having the characters listen to the author's favorite singer - wildly OOC) but in this case I would read 50K of Murderbot aggressively defending its Sanctuary Moon headcanons, writing epic AUs, and hacking its way around its inevitable bannings from various Sanctuary Moon chat spaces.
The twist seems to stick with it a lot more than suggested by the initial reaction in its normal disaffected tone that it just wants to find out if Flight Officer Hordööp-Sklanch gets it next.
The names on Sanctuary Moon are inspired all by themselves.
But yeah, if the show is its way of processing reality, it doesn't really have a good way of processing the show or analyzing its own reactions (yet). It's very much still figuring out how to feel about things. Or just how to feel, generally! (I suspect it's going to be epically pissed about this twist in a year or so.)
Plus the shitshow currently going down with Ratthi/Arada/Pin-Lee. So much of this show is about how you cannot control other people.
Yes! I also really love that living in a space future utopia does not stop them from being a dysfunctional mess. There's something very plausibly - sheltered? I guess? about Ratthi's whole approach to it - he doesn't seem to realize he's dealing with actual people who have actual feelings; he just expects everything to fall into place for him because presumably it always has. And they all three seem to think that it's just going to work out because they're doing all the right things. They have a contract! They get together for regular group humming sessions/talking things out! But it's sliding out of control anyway! What is happening??
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Oh HUH, I didn't notice that at all! Good catch from
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MB's attempts to construct a personality post-governor module hack, when we know it must've had something beforehand to even want to hack it in the first place, and trying to draw all those details from the absolute insanity that is a proper balls-to-the-wall soap opera. It's like if I got retrograde amnesia and decided Emmerdale was the right pattern for human behaviour.
AHAHAHA this is so accurate. At least it seems to have picked something with characters in a generally hero-y mold. (It could definitely have come up with worse options, I guess.) I would love to see it pull from the crew as well - I hope we see that!
Only two more episodes to go, WOE.
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. . . it's another parallel, Gurathin was last jacked into Murderbot when it was still recovering from the combat override module and suicide attempt. (Bharadwaj has now done tricky remote surgery on both of them.) And even then, it went for his throat, and even now, he dives unerringly for the data he's not supposed to see.
OH NO. (Oh yes.)
*adds another square to bingo card*
This also makes me wonder exactly how closely his past does track to Murderbot's. We know he was a corporate spy and they had a lot of control over him. Did he kill people too? Get people killed? He must have.
At this point in the show I would be shocked if people hadn't died as the result of his actions, either because of what the Corporation Rim did with the information he passed back to it, what he had to do to get some of that information, and/or because running an agent with a whole lot of addictions does not make them the most reliable (especially if the drugs are proprietary: one of my first thoughts when Gurathin revealed that part of his past was that it would have made him a hell of a liability if one of his assignments stranded him anywhere he couldn't readily get access to a corporate fix. It's not like he could have supplemented his stash with street drugs if he was in the field longer than planned. Or perhaps that's where he learned to give so little sign of his own pain: if you have already had to go through your days looking like Rando Non-Corpo File Clerk #5 while your body is hitting the limits of withdrawal fast, getting shot in a knee is comparably cool beans). The thing where parts of his nervous system can just be turned off thanks to the augments also opens up an entire field of possibilities, mostly horrific. This show in the last couple of episodes has reached Babylon 5 levels of "I am as surprised as you are, but this character's life is just canon."
Cosigned! Which honestly was not at all what I expected going into this. I thought it was going to be ... well, Sanctuary Moon, basically - a fun, rompy, lightweight space opera show. Which it is to a degree, but there's also so much thought and care that went into making it! I was not expecting to have this much to chew over.
Same! Like, I was hoping to enjoy it. The trailer was delightful. The trailer does not give any hint of how seriously the show takes all of its characters and all of its questions of personhood and autonomy and the hard sci-fi quality where every now and then the plot just barks up against something in Murderbot that is not a metaphor for some aspect of the human condition and can't be approached as such by the human characters. I like that.
[edit] Meant as a real compliment, there are ways in which Murderbot has been flashing me back to "Latent Image" (1999), one of the Voyager episodes which
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Would absolutely read. Epecially in light of its tendency to bring an arm cannon to a slapfight, the flamewars will be legendary.
The names on Sanctuary Moon are inspired all by themselves.
Before I tapped out on trying to track Murderbot meta through other people's Tumblrs (combination of diminishing free time and, actually, hitting a bad take, for which I extra appreciate you bringing me the good stuff), I found someone who observed that "Hordööp-Sklanch" sounded like a fly being swatted, which I have not been able to forget.
But yeah, if the show is its way of processing reality, it doesn't really have a good way of processing the show or analyzing its own reactions (yet). It's very much still figuring out how to feel about things. Or just how to feel, generally! (I suspect it's going to be epically pissed about this twist in a year or so.)
I can see that. And would also read its posts from that time.
I also really love that living in a space future utopia does not stop them from being a dysfunctional mess.
(To be pedantic, I'm not sure that I would describe Preservation as a utopia as opposed to a society which is doing its best to work toward a utopian ideal, but absolutely agreed on the demonstration that utopian ideals do not prevent interpersonal trainwrecks.)
And they all three seem to think that it's just going to work out because they're doing all the right things. They have a contract! They get together for regular group humming sessions/talking things out! But it's sliding out of control anyway! What is happening??
When phrased that way, it makes me think the trainwreck is also part of the show's thesis about the inherent messiness of people (Murderbot included, sorry) and how we still treat one another so often like the calculator idea of computers: I entered the right input! Why is the output so weird?
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I am actually confident his not blurting it out was, if not the sole cause, then at least a major contributor to the abruptness of his nope-out from the exercise, which didn't need further explanation in the moment—it's a kind of trust fall he has little tolerance for—but in hindsight looks like trying to get out of range before he actually does let slip his bitter about Mensah, which is his unrequited feelings. It would have followed naturally on the sweet: she saved my life and she doesn't love me. Instead he comes up with the naïveté thing, which has the virtue of not being untrue, but isn't the truth, either, because the rules of exercise are that "the bad stuff is part of the good stuff." And Mensah not feeling the same way about him is the bad part of the goodness of her rescuing him into this life.
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+1. Given the explosiveness of the further revelations the next second, I'm not even sure how many members of the team tracked that Murderbot had been ventriloquizing Gurathin. I mean, I am inclined to assume Mensah will put it together, but I would not put money on, say, Arada or Ratthi having caught it in the moment. At least Gurathin didn't say she was an intrepid galactic explorer.
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melted to contribute.